The Press WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23, 1950. India’s Policy

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26198, 23 August 1950, Page 6

The Press WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23, 1950. India’s Policy

India’s recent foreign policy has perplexed and worried Western nations which had, over-optimisti-cally it appears, counted India’s moral leadership of Asia as a factor that would operate actively against Communist expansion in Asia. They were encouraged to do so primarily because India’s basic policy is independence, and the independence of nations and peoples has no part in Communist expansion plans dictated in Moscow. Moreover, they see India fighting back against a violent Communist campaign within her own borders: in most of its states the Communist Party has been banned, and Communist terrorism in Hyderabad and Madras is being met with the full force of army and police. But there is nothing in the report (printed on Monday) of an interview Pandit Nehru gave to a “ New York Times ” correspondent at New Delhi that does other than confirm India’s general attitude of neutrality between Communist and anti-Communist Powers. Pandit Nehru offers the West a good deal of advice, without doubt kindly meant and offered in a spirit of friendliness. Communism is bound to have, as Pandit Nehru says, an appeal for the underprivileged; “ the awerage Asian cannot be “ swept away by the cry of “ ‘ Communist danger ’, because he “has not so much to lose”. Pandit Nehru correctly diagnoses causes and effects *when he says that Asia’s economic problems have been accentuated by “ breaking “ away ” from European political ties. But these things are not stated for the first time; the West has made earnest endeavours to remedy them, as the Colombo and Sydney conferences of British Commonwealth nations are witness—even though they be small witness in relation to the size of the problem. Bigger efforts are checked—as far as India' is concerned this is particularly true—by suspicions about “ strings ” that are imagined to be attached to help from the United States—the only available source of substantial help to-day. Directly, in reference to Korea, and by implication in other respects, Pandit Nehru tars the West with the brush of hated colonialism. This is shrewd but hardly fair. Pandit Nehru knows that the Korea case has no association with that is simply a Kremlin distortion of the case. India embarrassed and weakened the West in the Security Council by mixing the China issue with Korea; there is even less reason to confuse the Korea issue by connecting it—if only by way of warning—with colonialism. While India’s determination on a selfdevised middle course in world affairs appears explicit in Pandit Nehru’s remarks, his obsession that Asia and the Asians are part of a different world from the West is a barrier to the practical help he could give to the West in its relations with Asia, and to Asia in its relations with the West. Many believe that if the powerful forced in the Indian Cabinet which favour a more outspoken anti-Communist foreign policy were to assert themselves more vigorously, India would play a better and stronger part than at present in helping to keep the world at peace.